Is your community being transformed?
By Henry Lamb
web posted July 11, 2005
"I'm from the government; I'm here to help," is a phrase that
should raise warning flags for individuals and for elected officials
in every community. But what is the reaction when a private, not-
for-profit foundation appears, and says "we want to help
improve your town."
This is how it begins. In 2002, the Magi Foundation formed the
Pacific Partnership to "preserve and develop Old Town Pacific."
Pacific, Missouri is a small town of about 6,000 people (5.4
square miles), situated southwest of St. Louis. The project has
now grown to encompass 154 square miles, crossing into three
counties, into a "sustainable community" known as the Pacific
Ring.
Jim McHugh, chairman of the Magi Foundation, is the originator
of the project. The agenda for a recent conference boasts
"Creating a model sustainable community through balancing of
accelerated population and economic growth with the protection
of private property rights and the preservation of the highest
quality environment."
This mission presumes that the town of Pacific is currently not
sustainable, even though the local folks have sustained the
community since the early 1800s, without help from the Magi
Foundation, or the dozens of professional planners, researchers,
university professors, and agency bureaucrats that now drive the
project.
The July 7 conference heard reports from its committees on
Education and Research; Economic Growth; and Alternative
Energy. The reports were followed by what was called "open
discussion," but of the 12 panelists listed to do the discussing,
only one was a local farmer and land owner, Bill McLaren.
At a similar conference last January, McLaren told the project
leaders, "The reason you all have come here and found clean air
and water is because what you call open space, we call family
farms. It's no accident that this place is in good condition." He
told them that it was essential that they get local land owners
involved in the process - two years after the project began.
McHugh told a symposium of more than 30 "specialists" last
October, that "Our goal is to establish the Pacific Ring as a
laboratory for the study of the total environment to support
sustainable development."
Is this Pacific Ring project the result of local citizens demanding
that their town be transformed into a sustainable community? Did
the City Council adopt a resolution inviting all these experts to
come transform their town? There have been no such reports.
The blueprint for the Pacific Ring can be found in Agenda 21, a
U.N. policy document adopted at the 1992 Conference on
Environment and Development. The process is described in
Chapter 8. The Education Committee's work is laid out in
Chapter 36. Every project within the Pacific Ring initiative is
addressed somewhere in the Agenda 21 document.
As the project leaders describe the various activities in glowing
terms, the end result is obscured. The end result is a society
designed by professionals, managed by unelected bureaucrats,
imposed upon the people who are governed.
The project's multi-county jurisdiction is no accident; it is a
deliberate design objective, requiring a special act of the
legislature to define governing authority, most often to an
appointed council.
McHugh's first goal is to get a bill enacted to designate the area
as a special "micropolitan area with a goal of sustainability."
Dr. Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Gardens director, and one
of the 30 specialists involved in the project, says that the Pacific
Ring will be similar to the Adirondack Park in New York.
Everyone inside the Pacific Ring should learn about the
Adirondack Park, and see how it has destroyed private property
rights and the local economy.
These "sustainable communities" are being formed all across the
country. The process erodes the power of local elected officials,
by placing policy-making power in the hands of non-elected
bureaucrats and professionals who are not accountable to the
people who are governed. The people, however, are forced to
live by the rules and regulations imposed by the professionals.
Santa Cruz, California was the first sustainable community,
transformed through a process they proudly called "Local
Agenda 21." Because of the association with the United Nations,
proponents now avoid any recognition of Agenda 21, and use
names such as "Pacific Ring Initiative." The process is the same.
The goal is the same. The result is the same: loss of control by
elected officials, loss of property rights and value, and the
emergence of a managed society.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty
International.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com